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Which Is Harder, Healer or Tank?

Noticed one of the search terms that have apparently sent people to this blog was the phrase I just used in the title. The answer is YES.

Healing is hard if you’ve got a bad group, a tank that can’t hold aggro, dps that are insisting on targeting the wrong mob, really soft party members, low gear.

Tanking is harder if you have a healer who isn’t paying attention, dps that are on the wrong targets, a new instance, gear that is significantly lower than the dps average gear making it hard to hold aggro off them.

Healing gets easier and easier with gear. Tanking does too but not as much because your dpsers are getting better gear too. If I am on my healer and everyone in the party has a gear score of 5500 I know things will die fast and I can probably just spam Wild Growth and be done. If I’m on my tank and the same gear – hoo boy, I’d better watch Omen closely because that mage is going to pull off and so’s the hunter, and probably the healer too…

In 5 mans, I’d vote tanking is harder. In raids I think healers have the harder job. Thoughts?

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6 Responses

I agree, tanking dungeons can be harder than tanking raids (with exceptions of course), but I still feel tanking *anything* is harder than healing anything. I just don’t have that leader/drill sergeant thing in me, I’d much rather stay back and heal. In 90% of cases people look at the tank for guidance, and I am: a. utterly lost in most instances (I managed to get lost even in ICC); b. uncomfortable with the responsibility. Healing was scary at first, but it got fun fast; tanking got less scary, but never as fun.

Very true there, tanks have to work hard to counter misbehaving dps-ers and a poor healer can make the tank’s life miserable. On the other hand, a healer can have a nervous breakdown trying to heal a soft tank and a bunch of dps who are pulling aggro all the time.

A fantastic tank or healer, either, can carry a poor group a long way.

It depends on the encounter and how well suited is the tank/healer/DPS for it specifically.

Take the tribunal of ages encounter in heroic Halls of Stone. This is a very simple encounter for a protection paladin but rage management can be an issue if you are a protection warrior with no mage or hunter in the group.

Any enocunter with a large amount of AoE damage on all party members is normally a good challenge for a holy paladin who does not overgeared the event, especially if the fight requires some movement.

Heroic Shadow Labyrinth required the CC player to know how to chain CC on several pulls, at least before 3.0.